Jorge Pardo | Hyperallergic
View of River Styx at Sea View with works by Erica Mao, Coco Young, Heidi Lau (hanging), Joseph Elmer Yoakum, and Gretta Solie (bench and chair) (photography by Nice Day Photo, courtesy Sea View)
By Matt Stromberg
In 1993, the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles offered Jorge Pardo an exhibition as part of its Focusseries. The young Cuban-born artist had begun making a name for himself with objects that blurred the lines between art and design, but this would be his first solo museum show in LA, where he had settled after receiving his BFA from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena in 1988. Instead of creating pieces to display inside a museum, he conceived of an artwork that would exist entirely outside of it. “I have a sloped lot and an idea for a house,” he told Hunter Drohojowska-Philp in the Los Angeles Times in 1998. “How can I take those ingredients and make them do something you wouldn’t expect?”